


All I See

by grimdarkpixels



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: 'connor was traumatized' outcome to public enemy, 'simon left behind' outcome to stratford tower, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Gen, I ALWAYS FORGET TO TAG SOMETHING, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Minor Violence, Past Suicide, Post-Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), Resurrection, bass boosted bring me to life playing in the background of every characters head basically, connor is getting Puncht, connor used simon to find jericho, i guess, its a fun time, markus is Pisst, markus' pacifism-violence ratio is left ambiguous, simon is Stresst, simon only hears it and gets a brief glimpse of the aftermath, they go back for him after everything, whatever the equivalent of resurrection is for an android anyway sdfghgfdfgh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 08:12:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15263169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimdarkpixels/pseuds/grimdarkpixels
Summary: Simon knows what it feels like to be dead.It feels like nothing. Being crushed by the darkness, but not being able to process it. Or anything. It feels like nothing at all. There’s nothing left. No pain. No fear.Just darkness.





	All I See

Simon knows what it feels like to be dead.

It feels like nothing. Being crushed by the darkness, but not being able to process it. Or anything. It feels like nothing at all. There’s nothing left. No pain. No fear.

Just darkness.

The darkness follows him from beyond the dead. He’s confused and afraid when he wakes up again. The last thing he remembers is holding the gun to his chin and pulling the trigger. He didn’t hear the gunshot. What happened?

His voice doesn’t sound like his own. It’s staticky and weak. He can’t see. He calls for help.

A voice he doesn’t recognise calls back to him. It asks him to tell it where Jericho is. Simon refuses. He’s scared. He doesn’t trust this stranger. He wants his friends back. North and Josh and Markus. They had left him behind. He didn’t fully understand why.

He suddenly hears Markus’ voice call to him. Markus tells him he’s come to take Simon home. Simon’s broken chest fills with relief. He’s going to go back to Jericho, and everything will be okay.

Simon gives Markus the directions to Jericho.

Markus isn’t here.

His begging is futile. The stranger with Markus’ voice pulls out a piece of him and he loses the ability to think, shrinking back into the darkness again.

Time passes.

Simon can’t compute how much. Seconds? Days? Years? He doesn’t know. He just knows it’s a different time than it was before. He still can’t see.

“Hello?” his voice calls. Still weak.

“Simon! Thank god,” he hears Markus’ voice sigh in relief.

Simon remembers. He’s not stupid. This isn’t Markus. Whoever it is has copied his voice, and they’re going to use him again.

The stranger with Markus’ voice touches him. He recoils with energy he can’t spare.

“Don’t touch me! You’re not Markus! Let me go!”

“Simon, it’s okay. We’re here to take you hom--”

“You said that before and you lied! I won’t tell you anything. Just deactivate me again!”

The stranger leaves his personal space.

“What’s wrong with him? ‘I said that before and I lied,’ what does that-- what happened?”

“Oh no…” a voice Simon doesn’t recognise very well. Someone is helping the stranger with Markus’ voice. A broken warning enters Simon’s blank vision: **STRESS LEVEL: 41%**

“Connor, what did they do to him? Why is he acting like this?” Simon’s dysfunctional eyes widen upon hearing North’s voice laced with what he could only call concern.

“This is my fault,” the stranger -- _Connor,_ Simon’s brain supplies -- says. Simon hears footsteps and assumes Connor begins pacing the room.

“What do you mean ‘your fault’?” Not-Markus says.

“I...I used your voice to get Jericho’s location out of him.”

Simon feels his jaw drop. So was Markus really here? Wait, why did this person need Jericho’s location? **STRESS LEVEL: 46%** flashes in Simon’s mind palace.

The atmosphere grows tense as the room falls silent.

“You _what?!”_ Maybe-Markus suddenly shouts, making Simon flinch and his stress climb to **50%.**

“I-I didn’t have a choice,” Connor stammers. “If I didn’t find Jericho--”

“BULL _SHIT,_ you didn’t have a choice! What were you thinking?!” Markus screams, and Simon starts trembling. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard Markus sound so furious, and it’s terrifying, and Simon still isn’t even sure if it’s really Markus in front of him and he wishes so badly he could just _see_ what was going on.

“If I didn’t find Jericho, CyberLife would have destroyed me. I didn’t have a choice, I’m sorry!”

Simon hears a sickening _CRACK_ echo through the room and footsteps stumbling backwards.

“Oh my god, Markus!” he hears Josh cry out. North _and_ Josh are here? What’s happening? What just happened? What made that sound?! **STRESS LEVEL: 59%**

Simon hears another weaker sounding impact, followed by Markus screaming and a loud thud like something, or someone, crashing to the ground. He hears more impact sounds, and he thinks Markus has tackled Connor to the ground.

“Markus, stop!” Josh exclaims.

“He _used Simon,_ Josh!” Markus snaps, briefly stopping his assault on Connor. Simon hears a grunt and a dull clattering noise, he feels whatever surface he’s resting on shake with the impact of what he guesses is either Connor’s or Markus’ body.

“I’m sorry, Markus!” Connor sounds far away, so he probably threw Markus off of him.

“Do you know how many people we lost because of you?!”

What was Markus talking about? They lost people? Who? What did Connor do?! **STRESS LEVEL: 66%**

“He helped us in the end, didn’t he?” Josh interrupts.

“Josh, we lost _thousands_ of our people because of him…” North responds.

Thousands? What happened to Jericho? Simon couldn’t get a word in to ask any questions. All he could do was listen to the voices in the room bickering over each other and the sounds of punches being thrown, all while his stress kept climbing higher.

Simon hears another _CRACK_ and Connor yelping, followed by another sound of someone falling to the ground. He hears another person drop to the ground and Connor starts making visceral gurgling noises, the dull sound of plastic cracking sounding magnified in Simon’s ears.

_“Llllet...go of me…!”_

“Markus, that’s enough!” Josh yells. Simon hears two sets of footsteps rushing across the room and the sounds of a struggle.

“Breaking him won’t change anything, Markus!” North exclaims, sounding closer than before.

“Get the _fuck_ off me!” Markus yells. Simon reaches a breaking point and words force themselves out of his chest.

_“PLEASE STOP IT!”_

**STRESS LEVEL: 95%  
WARNING: CRITICAL STRESS LEVEL**

Silence sweeps the room again. Simon hears people scrambling to their feet, but he’s not sure who.

“Simon! Simon, it’s North. I’m here, I’m real, everything is okay,” North blurts out, reaching out for Simon’s hand.

“How do I--How--Why should I trust you?”

“Simon, please believe me, I’m right here. We’re all here, we’re not going anywhere. We’re going to fix you up and take you home. Josh, where’s the repair kit?”

Footsteps travel across to the far side of the room and double back, coming to an end in front of Simon.

“Here,” Josh says, probably addressing North. Simon feels a hand gently land on his shoulder. “Simon, you’re badly damaged. We’re going to try and fix your optical units first, but you have to trust us, alright? We’re not going to hurt you. You’re safe now.”

“I...okay,” Simon says, his voice small.

**STRESS LEVEL: 75%**

North’s hand leaves Simon’s and she takes some steps away from him. “Connor, are you okay? We need authorisation to get Simon down.”

“I can do that,” Connor replies, his voice glitching but still coherent. Simon hears mechanical whirring and clicking, presumably from Connor trying to stand up, followed by footsteps approaching him. An affirmative sounding beep sounds out close to Simon’s head as he falls into Josh’s arms. His body is guided into a sitting position and he hears a box click open.

“Simon, I’m going to remove your optical units now,” Josh explains in a calming tone. Simon nods and feels Josh’s fingers on the side of his head, pressing down and deactivating Simon’s skin. Simon takes deep breaths he doesn’t need to try calm himself down. He feels Josh’s hands hold his right eye open and press down on the pressure plate until the broken optical unit pops out and clatters on the floor. Josh repeats the process with his other eye.

Josh’s hand falls from Simon’s face and returns with a round object, pressing it into Simon’s empty eye socket. He cringes as it’s held against the socket until it enters properly, which makes Simon instinctively flinch and blink rapidly as his vision fades in. Josh pushes the second optical unit into Simon’s other eye socket and it clicks in place with less resistance. Simon’s vision slowly focuses and he sees, for presumably the first time in a long time, Josh’s face staring down at him.

**STRESS LEVEL: 45%**

“Do they work?” Josh asks.

“Yes,” Simon replies, blinking as he adjusts to his regained sight and his skin reactivates.

Simon looks around the room. He doesn’t recognise this place, but it’s brightly lit. He turns his head and sees North’s back turned to him, holding what looks like a cauterizer in front of an android he doesn’t recognise, who has thirium leaking out his nose and patches where the broken plastic under his skin were visible, most noticeably on his left cheek and around his throat. Simon assumes it’s Connor.

“Simon?”

Simon turns his head and looks up, seeing Markus standing over him with a face that was riddled with guilt and fear.

Simon averts his eyes. He doesn’t know what to feel. He’s conflicted between being angry he was left behind, scared of what he just did to Connor, suspicious that this is another trap, or just being relieved and happy to see his friend again.

Josh gives Markus an uneasy look and hesitantly stands up and away from Simon. Markus kneels in front of Simon just as slowly and uncertain.

Markus opens his mouth, but whatever he wants to say doesn’t come out. He looks around with uncertainty, his face scrunching. He raises a hand up and pauses for a second, thinking twice before he slowly moves it to rest on Simon’s chest, over the injury there. Simon tenses, but he doesn’t push Markus away to the surprise of both of them.

**STRESS LEVEL: 29%**

Simon places his hand over Markus’, and he’s not sure whether he intends to push it away or keep it there, but he doesn’t have time to decide before he sees their hands melt from synthetic skin to plastic. His new eyes lock onto Markus’ as thoughts and feelings that aren’t his own flood his mind.

_I miss you. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left you. I miss you so much. I can’t forgive myself. What have I done? I hate myself for feeling this way. I as good as killed you that day. I’m never going to see you again. I should have done more. I keep missing you. So many of us are dead. We won. We can get you back. He used you. I want to destroy him for that. Critical stress. I scared you so much. I’m scared too. I let my feelings get the better of me. So much blood is on my hands already. I shouldn’t have hit him. I don’t want to lose you again. I have to apologise. **I can’t lose you again.**_

Simon tears his hand away, watching it as the skin climbs back to cover his hand again. He looks up with widened eyes to Markus, who stares back looking like he saw death itself. (And Simon can’t find himself completely ruling out the possibility that he did. Twice.)

Markus’ lifts his hand from Simon’s chest and puts it over his own mouth. Simon wonders if he heard himself, how angry and different he sounded. Horror and disgust flash through Markus’ eyes, and Simon can only assume he did.

Neither of them speak. They don’t know what they would say. They just stare at each other for a while, Simon isn’t sure how long -- a minute or two, at least -- before Markus pulls Simon into a hug, burying his face in Simon’s neck. Simon tenses in surprise and feels Markus sob against him. He feels artificial tears soak into his shirt.

Simon can hear Markus whispering “I’m so sorry,” into his neck, over and over, like Markus is absolutely desperate to take back everything that happened with his words.

It breaks Simon’s heart.

Simon hugs Markus back as tight as he can. He thinks he’s crying too. It’s like a dam inside him breaks, and he can’t find it within himself to be angry or scared. Not at Markus.

“I forgive you,” he whispers back.

No more words are exchanged. They just hold on to each other as long as they’re allowed.

**STRESS LEVEL: 0%**

**Author's Note:**

> credit for most of the ideas and shit goes to spider jesus again. that son of a gun sure does love coming up with absolutely fantastic potential angst! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
> 
> literally all of the stuff i've written in the past week or so has been simon-centric. im a weak little bitch and i want to write more stuff for that au or for kara/luther or something that involves josh more because josh is sO FUCKING OVERLOOKED AND ITS A CRIME HES A GOOD MAN--
> 
> i. like these fellas a lot ok. ya


End file.
